* Syria: “Roughly two months into this important yet scarcely documented battle, Syria’s antigovernment fighters have succeeded in laying siege to the heavily fortified Abu ad Duhur air base. They have downed at least two of the base’s MIG attack jets. And this month they have realized results few would have thought possible.”

* Eurozone austerity: “The Spanish government on Thursday presented a draft budget for 2013 with a package of tax increases and spending cuts that, while unpopular with the public, it said would guarantee the country could meet deficit-cutting targets agreed to with the rest of the euro zone.”

* GDP revisions: “The U.S. economy grew even more slowly than originally thought in the second quarter of 2012, according to new data from the Commerce Department. One culprit? The severe heat and drought that has dented crop production in the Midwest this summer.”

* In another scoop for Mother Jones’ David Corn, there’s a new video of Mitt Romney explaining that his private-equity firm, Bain Capital, intended to “identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then ‘harvest them at a significant profit’ within five to eight years.”

* Heartbreaking: “Victims of sexual assault in military say brass often ignore pleas for justice.”

* In the AP’s defense, trying to fact-check Michele Bachmann is inherently tricky – most of what she says is detached from anything resembling reality.

* Fox News joins the conservative chorus that believes women earning less than men is “not a national problem.”

* Very cool: “The landing site of the Mars rover Curiosity was once covered with fast-moving and possibly waist-high water that could have possibly supported life, NASA scientists announced Thursday.”